Thursday, September 6, 2012

(unmissable) interview

utah's city weekly magazine just published this fantastic interview with ish by austen diamond. it gives us as great a glimpse into his creative process as we've gotten so far and he himself also lays out why his poetry has the impressionistic, collage quality that has mesmerised listeners for the last twenty years. click here to read it in its original home or read below for the cut n pasted words.
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Shabazz Palaces

Ishmael Butler: All questions, no answers

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass,” wrote Anton Chekhov.

Although
removed by more than 100 years, Ishmael Butler (aka Palaceer Lazaro)
epitomizes the Russian
existential writer’s show-don’t-tell style—the essence of this quote—and
his disregard for traditional story structure. Chekhov also believed
that what is obligatory of an artist is not to provide answers, but to
properly pose questions.

In
this vein, Butler, the rhyming half of Seattle’s Shabazz Palaces, pushes
the boundaries of storytelling in hip-hop. First, there was the band
members’ anonymity—virtually unheard of within a genre of celebrity
names—during the first two EP releases, allowing merit alone to gain
notoriety without relying on the successes of Butler’s previous group,
Digable Planets.
Butler
also offers mysterious, semi-cryptic titles, like “An Echo From the
Hosts That Profess Infinitum” and “Endeavors for Never (The Last Time We
Spoke You Said You Were not Here. I Saw You Though.)” from the
critically acclaimed 2011 release Black Up.

Each
song shows its own “glint of light on broken glass” in a smattering of
vignettes written seemingly as stream of consciousness. Butler would
argue that these several-lines-long scenes sewn together are the most
realistic approach to penning a narrative.

“A
film or book is a nonrealistic view of life,” says Butler, who then
describes a fictional scenario of a couple cyclically falling in and out
of love. “It seems abstract [as it’s happening]. You can pick out those
parts and then, later, put it in line [for a story]. But that’s not the
way life goes; it’s not the way you hear, think, feel.

“I’m
trying to reflect what’s happening to me and the world more
realistically than sitting down and filtering out a linear story,” says
Butler, whose songs, rich in imagery, allow open interpretation, much
like a work of non-narrative contemporary film art. It poses questions
and gives nary an answer. For example, “Are you ... Can you ... Were
you? (Felt)” muses on the illusion of time, the problem with
materialism, the adoption of television over literature, the struggles
of African-Americans and so on.

Also
within that song are clues to Butler’s writing processes: “Aw, dude/ The
spicier the food/ When you chew, fuck their rules/ It’s a feeling.”
Furthermore, as he speaks via phone from his home, the way he describes
his creative process isn’t dissimilar to how a medium would describe how
they channel a deity from another realm.

“When
I’m making music, I don’t feel like I’m doing something, as much as I
feel like something is happening to me,” Butler says.

The
environment has to be perfect—the lights dimmed, the proper tools put in
place and Butler relaxed and calm. And then “it” just comes. He has
difficulty (or maybe it’s reluctance) describing the process further,
but gives the allusion of it being meditative—hypnotic even.

Butler
doesn’t think too much—about the lyrics or the industrial, minimalistic
beats that he produces with Tendai “Baba” Maraire. “I don’t necessarily
like all the sounds or the rhymes [that come out], but I believe
in them,” he says. “[It’s like] you’re spiraling up or down or to the
side. But when your instincts come, that’s where it’s at.”

Yet
it’s not all from a higher power; there is responsibility on his end, be
it culling sources of inspiration or habitually jotting down lyrical
sketches. He cites Harlem Renaissance poets—like Nikki Giovanni, Alain
LeRoy Locke, James Baldwin and, especially, The Last Poets—as shaping
his worldview and opening his eyes to wordplay and the power of
language. These were tradition-challenging writers whose fresh and
clever approach was derived from their urban environment. Butler is
doing just that now. His work is not derivative of these cats, just
informed.

“Everything
is born of something else,” Butler says. On his phone, there are
roughly 2,500 recorded notes—phrases, sketches, rhymes—but he rarely
goes back to them as a direct source material. “Everything that I record
or think about or write down or whatever, even if you never see it
again, it all leads to a song in one way or another.”

The
whole process is magical, he says. “What’s happening is some divine
stuff. You’re channeling and you feel like you’re plugged up into
something. It’s hard to describe or chronicle. I’m not able to do it.
I’m always amazed when cats can do that ... maybe when I’m older [I will
be able to].”

It’s admirable to deal in the currency of mystery, though. After all, “It’s a feeling.”
Even
if Butler could describe his creative process, he probably
wouldn’t—that’s not his ethos. He shows glints of light on the broken
glass of his fractured storytelling, and the listerner can extrapolate
meaning. Butler’s job isn’t to provide answers, it’s to ask questions.